MOGADISHU—Somali gunmen on Monday freed a foreign mine worker seized in the country's northern Puntland region over the weekend, an official said.
"We've been tracking the kidnappers since last night and finally we succeeded to convince them to release the hostage after negotiations," said Mohamed Ali Gurhan, a district commissioner in Puntland.
The oil worker seized on Saturday was reported at the time to be a Pakistani holding a British passport.
"There is no condition on this release," Gurhan told Agence France-Presse.
A policeman who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the man's release and said he was to be returned to Puntland's capital Bossaso.
Bossaso is a port rife with armed gangs smuggling everything from arms to migrants across the Gulf of Aden.
Foreign nationals are regularly targetted in the war-wracked Somalia and often freed after payment of huge ransom.
Last week, two Italian nuns in their 60s were released after having been held since November, when they were kidnapped in Kenya, then taken over the border into Somalia.
There is still no word of a Canadian journalist and an Australian photographer abducted last August, though a Somali journalist and two drivers taken with them were released in January.
A tribal chief negotiating their release said in September the kidnap gang wanted a ransom of $2.5 million.
Source:INQUIRER
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